John Kasich teaches Torah to the Jews

Kasich lectured Torah scholars in a Jewish bookstore and he was not being subtle...

Jack Engelhard, 18/04/16 20:03

Jack Engelhard

צילום: מתוך האתר האישי

Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.com

If John Kasich is your man to come save the Republican Party in the race to the White House, you may want to think this over.

Who knew he was such an arrogant fool?

As reported here by New York Magazine, the Governor of Ohio and the number three man among the GOP candidates drifted into a New York bookstore run by Torah scholars where most people come to learn. Kasich came to teach, to teach and to ridicule.

Surely angling for Jewish votes days before the New York Primary and the arrival of Passover, he may have picked the wrong group to win hearts and minds, showing off as he did in front of men who’ve been studying Torah since the age of three and since the age of Moses…or from the day Moses brought it all down to us from Mount Sinai.

If you thought Rashi was the man who unlocked the secrets of our Scriptures, forget it, because John Kasich knows better.In the most repellent performance of this campaign season by any candidate, Kasich swaggered among these learned men intent on straightening them out about what’s really going on in the Hebrew Bible, and he was not being subtle. Some would say he was being totally obnoxious. I would.

He walked around the shop, filled with a thousand volumes of Biblical texts, texts that many of these men knew by heart, as if he owned the place and as if he owned the Bible. If you thought Rashi was the man who unlocked the secrets of our Scriptures, forget it, because John Kasich knows better.

From what was picked up by New York Magazine, we find men of learning being elaborately polite to such an important guest, as he kept hectoring them about the heroes of the Bible, beginning, for him, with Joseph, the story Kasich particularly liked, so he explained it as if this was breaking news.

The men listened courteously as Kasich peppered his one-of-a-kind expertise with such remarks as, “Do you guys like Joseph?”

Well of course they did.

“Do you guys know the story of Joseph?”

The men were too respectful to laugh in his face at such a question.

From Joseph, Kasich moved on to Isaac, and then to Joshua.

“Do you guys know Joshua?” asked the governor of Ohio and the man who thinks he still has a chance to become President of the United States.

Maybe so on becoming President – and maybe these men of the Hebrew Bible know Joshua. There is always that chance.

Or maybe not, because John Kasich was quick to add: “Am I going to have to teach you guys?”

After teaching about Joshua, Kasich moved ahead to Moses and Abraham. He explained the differences, as Maimonides never could.

Who needs Jewish Torah genius, which evolved over the centuries, when we’ve got John Kasich?

Good thing he came along to clear it all up, all the way from Ohio.

I spent some good years in Ohio, Cincinnati, and I do not remember people being quite that offensive, backward and simple-minded.

Maybe I stayed in the wrong parts of town and maybe in other parts there were citizens who thought Jews walked with horns and tails.

I looked him up and found that John Kasich was a newcomer. He was born and raised in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.

That is probably a good town with fine people – but since John Kasich is their son, who knows what they’re really thinking?

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com